Wyoming, I ride...

Yessiree! Scratch another state off the list I have now added Wyoming to my visited states and even have the picture here to prove it! Now what was I doing in Wyoming you may ask? Simply surveying telephone systems for the Forest Service. I had the opportunity to visit five Forest Service offices on my trip and below are the signs of the offices I visited.

The Shoshone National Forest Supervisor's Office in Cody, WY. This was my first stop on my tour of Wyoming.

The Cody Interagency Dispatch Center (IDC) also located in Cody, WY. This was more of a quick side trip as this was a rather small office.

The Wapiti Ranger District Office, once again in Cody, WY. (Yes I did spend a bit of time in Cody, WY) My last stop before heading south into the central part of Wyoming.


The Washakie Ranger District Office located in Lander, WY. After visiting this office I turned west and had the opportunitiy to drive through the Wind River Canyon which was quite a spectacular site.


My last stop before heading to Jackson, WY to catch a flight home. The Wind River Ranger Station located in Dubois, WY. After visiting this office I got to drive through the Grand Teton National Park!


Not the greatest quality since it was taken from a camera phone, but this is a shot of the mountain range known as the Grand Tetons taken from the Jackson Hole airport.



And another shot with a slightly wider angle.


And of course, I had to add an updated map of my visited states. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

An updated map

Ok, call me obsessed if you want to but I've decided to update my map now that I'm here in DC (via Virginia). Perhaps a bit early to be updating it since I may in fact visit a few more states before I leave a week from Friday but as I'm sitting here sick in bed I decided to just go ahead and update this.

This map may not look much different than the previous one, but if you look carefully, you can see Virginia is now colored in. And if you look very carefully you can see that DC is also colored in. :) 

Ok, so the DC one might be too small to actually see, but it is colored in, trust me.

One unfortunate thing to note in this update is that in the last couple of weeks I just missed going to Oregon and Wyoming, however I am hopeful that I will get to visit both of those states sometime in the near future. In fact I'm hopeful that someday I'll have a chance to visit all of the 50 states, though that may be a few years down the road.

Anyway, until next time, thanks for stopping by.

The curious traveler

Have you ever wondered what a map of the US would look like with just the states you've been to highlighted? I have, on many occasions. Well now I don't have to wonder any longer thanks to this website I found. You can use it too by following the link below. And just for fun I added a world map as well since I recently went on a short term mission trip to Chile with a layover in Colombia. Believe it or not that was my first trip ever outside the US.



create your own personalized map of the USA



create your own visited country map

I'm actually scheduled to go to Wyoming in a little over a week so I can update my map after that happens. With all the traveling I do for business I hope I can continue filling in more blanks. Well, hope you enjoyed that long overdue blog post. Until next time, thanks for stopping by!

A New Car, Exercise and Catching Up...

Wow! It really has been a long time since I posted something. I usually am good about getting one out every 3 months but it's been practically 4 months this time. I wonder if people have been checking this blog for the last 4 months hoping to see something. Well, if you have been and you're here now, please accept my humblest apology, I've been very busy and the few chances I may have had to post something, I probably just didn't think of it at the right time.

Anyway, the most recent thing to happen, (Ok, so it technically happened on Memorial Day, but who's keeping track anyway?) I got a new car! Yes, I'm afraid I crashed that little white car for the last time on my way to a CT scan up in LA and... well, let's just say it was too much to recover from this time. (i.e. the cost to fix was greater than the blue-book value so it was "technically" totaled) So I went car shopping online and came across a very nice car for a decent price at Carmax. It's a 2005 Chrysler Sebring 4 door sedan with less than 25k miles on it. (or it least it did when I bought it) But as I'm sure you're dying to see what it looks like, (well, maybe not dying but you know what I mean) without further adieu, here is a photo tour of the new car.

Here it is nice and clean after a recent car wash!

And here's a little closer look.

And now a view from the other side.

The front console complete with CD Player, Cassette Player, Air Conditioning, MPG (Miles per gallon) tracking, Cruise Control and more!

The front seats along with a little compartment for CDs between the seats and even a little spot to keep my shades! (Very handy)

The back seats with my CD case in the middle.

Oooo, look at the shiny wheels! (I did say I just went to the carwash didn't I?)

And last but not least my new license plate that I just got about a week ago, complete with my new license plate cover. I know, it's changed, but speaking of running I'm getting ready to run in 2 5k races on July 19th and July 26th. Doesn't that sound exciting?!? No??? Ok, I realize not everyone is in to running, I just happen to be into it right now because... well, let's just say it has to do with health reasons and no I'm not trying to lose weight! Quite the contrary actually. Take a look at the picture of me running in my last post if you need confirmation on that.

So what else has been happening since I last posted. Well, I changed jobs for the second time in about 6 months, I nearly had surgery, I've been playing in several concerts lately (there'll be three this week including todays) and I started a new diet and exercise program. Again let me emphasize, I am NOT trying to lose weight, I am on this new diet to try to help heal my digestive tract. The exercise (running, biking and just last night I added swimming) is to help build my body up into better shape. But why biking and swimming you may ask... Well, I am considering possibly competing (ok, maybe not competing, more like participating) in a sprint triathlon on Catalina island this November. It involves a half mile (open water) swim, a 10 mile bike ride and a 5k run at the end. Crazy!!! Probably, but I figured if I can get myself into that kind of shape for this fall it'll also help my body in recovering from this disease. If you would like to track my progress as I train you can visit my new training blog I just started at kokid.sweat365.com/ Why the nickname KO Kid? Don't ask. It's a long story as it's a nickname I picked up at work.

Well, I think that's going to do it for this post. As always, thanks for stopping by! And leave a comment if you feel so inclined. Until next time! (Hopefully sooner rather than later, but you know how I am with posting) :)

Too much physical activity

Is it possible to have too much physical activity? (rhetorical question) Perhaps my body is just telling me I've been doing a bit too much lately. So what happened? Well lets see... On Saturday Feb 23rd I ran in my first 5k.


You may notice the watermark on this picture, I decided not to pay $30 to get a digital copy of it. Instead I used a creative screen capture application to get it. And unfortunately the camera caught me just before I smiled, (see the grin on my running partners face?) so I ended up looking like I was half dead. Oh well, I never was very photogenic.

The following Wednesday Aaron, Brian and I went snowboarding. This was only my second time snowboarding, the first time was several years ago, so I didn't do very well.


Here's the three of us riding the lift up to the top of the mountain.


Here's one of Aaron and I.


Now that is one beautiful view of the lake.


Me giving a thumbs up sign from my knees.

At the end of the day I tried to go skiing and found my legs were just too dead already. So much for having fun skiing after a hard day of snowboarding. (sigh) Oh well...

On the way home my legs started cramping something fierce and later in the evening I could feel some pretty intense cramps in three different places in each of my legs. Starting to sound like too much physical activity yet? Ok, well I have one more for you then.

Last week I signed up for a gym membership and this evening was my first time working with a personal trainer. (no pictures with this one) One of the exercises he had me do was push ups. Now I already knew my arms were extremely weak, but somehow I only managed two! (how embarrassing) He also had me do several other more interesting exercises and as a result just about my whole body feels worn out. He also wants me to up my calorie intake to 1000 a day and my protein intake to 100 grams a day and to do this resistance training 3-5 days a week. Ouch! And I thought training for a 5k was hard!

Ok, I realize for some of you that may not seem like a lot of physical activity, but I can tell you, it's a lot more than I'm used to. :)

If you feel so inclined you can post a comment or else just keep poking back in to see when I update this again. (it may be sooner than you think)

A trip to Arizona

No you're not hallucinating, I actually am posting an update. This week I had something worth posting about. Ok, I'll let you decide if it was worth posting about. And if you post a comment I'll assume you came by and survived the heart attack of seeing an update.

Anyway, if you hadn't already guessed by reading the title I'm in Arizona this week, on a business trip no less. Unfortunately as business trips oftentimes go Murphy's law was in full effect and our first day onsite was a 14 hour day. Thankfully I was able to get about 9 hours of sleep last night so I'm feeling much better today. One thing I will say about Arizona, the scenery is much prettier than California. (though not quite as pretty as Colorado) So without further adieu here are a couple of pictures we were able to take...


Here's an example of that beauty, you can kind of see the red in the soil with the mesa in the background. We actually did see a sign on this trip for an exit called Table Mesa, talk about redundant. :)


A picture taken at daybreak, unfortunately I didn't catch it while the sun was on the horizon, which was much prettier. This picture still doesn't do it justice though.


Our handy GPS, which kept us from getting lost when we were driving in the middle of nowhere.


Yes there was snow, at least at the higher elevations, there was quite a bit in Flagstaff actually. Hopefully the storm they're predicting won't cause a problem friday when driving back to the airport.


Beyond the stop sign warning sign you can see a lovely horizon with the National Forest in the middle. We are working in the Apache-Sitgreave National Forest and it is actually quite beautiful.


Our destination at last, the Black Mesa ranger station. This was our view when we arrived.


A lovely view of the forest near the ranger station.


A typical information center like you often see at rest stops and ranger stations off of major interstate highways.


And I thought they only had these in the Northeast, like in Vermont.


A view of the entire tree. (almost)


A very nice tribute to a man with a very good name. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to ask about who he was.


The only "fast food" in town. I guess maybe that's why Subway is the largest fast food chain in the US. (that's our Infiniti M35 parked out front by the way, it's a very fast car!)


Why does my co-worker JT look so happy? Perhaps it's because we're getting ready to leave at a little after 4 instead of a little after 11 like the night before.


Here's a little better view of the stuffed bear in the lobby of the ranger station.


I couldn't resist getting my picture taken with it. :)


A double warning about the ice.


The name says it all, though I think perhaps trimming is in order here.


A lovely view of the ranger station as we leave.


As we drove back through Holbrook on our way to Winslow I snapped a shot of this place. Don't see too many of these anymore.





A couple pictures of the clouds, though again, the pictures don't do that sunset justice.

Now just in case some of you took offense at what I said about Arizona not being as pretty as Colorado; here are a couple of pictures that I did take while in Colorado that will hopefully give you somewhat of an idea of why I said that.



Ok, so two pictures may not seem like much proof, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.

With that I'll conclude this post. Until next time, (hopefully in less than 2 months) thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed it!